The Islamic meaning of the word hijāb actually means “modesty.” Though only women wear the Hijabs, modesty is not a gendered concept. Both men and women have the responsibility to retain their modesty by preventing physical attraction from the opposite sex. Since men and women have different physical attributes that attract the opposite sex, there […]
Read more "Basic Religiouswear for the Male Muslim"A friend of mine visited this past weekend. After the usual string of courtesies and kind words, he pulled from his bag a jar of Puck® Creamy cheese, the only gift I had ever asked for. In his tongue, he pronounces it a lot like book creamy cheese. He bought in the Middle East Market of […]
Read more "The Dairy Monopoly"By looking at which nationalities are most represented in a college that already attracts international students, Ohio University, one can almost pin-point which country’s economy is flourishing at the moment just from a walk around campus. In my experience in-and-out of the foreign language building where English intensive classes are held, I can tell you […]
Read more "Intercultural Marriage between Saudis and Americans"We know Haram to be any act that is forbidden or off-limits as outlined by Allah, but where did it come from? This was my initial task: explore Haram– but while meandering through the etymology of “Haram”, I quickly found myself in the thick of texts detailing “Harem,” which were, (am I reading this correctly?) […]
Read more "Is Harem Haram?"Saudi Arabia is in an eon of transformation. In the last 50 years it has obliterated its previous rate of illiteracy down to near-zero. Education for women has also become a marked investment for the country, as demonstrated in the King Abdullah Scholarship program, the largest scholarship program in the history of Saudi Arabia, that […]
Read more "Saudi Arabia and Higher Education"Today, Hashish is wildly popular in the Middle East, even in places where its criminalization calls for capital punishment, like in Saudi Arabia, whose government beheaded 2 pairs of hashish-smuggling brothers this summer. Usage hasn’t always been so monitored, and since its introduction 2 centuries after the death of the prophet Muhammad, it has been […]
Read more "Hashing it out: a brief glance at the historical usage of the cannabis plant."The linguistic adaption of a word from one language to another brings a whole host of inconsistencies and incompatibilities. I once had a friendly taxi driver who was shy to say his name. I considered this to be a silly thing to avoid, but he said Americans seem to like him less once they knew. I […]
Read more "Are we Talking about the Same Jihad?"
Across Cultures 